


the future's in our hands (and we will never be the same again)

by revanchxst (BadWolfGirl01)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canderous Ordo sits in a gay way because he's at least bi, Canon-Typical Violence, Cognizant Revan, Established Relationship, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Grey Revan, Human Disaster Revan, Non-Canonical Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Revan Remembers, Revan and Canderous are a chaotic murder duo, Revan has Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, actual discord message sent to my friend:, one minute it's, she's trying to be a Sith but she's really bad at it, the next it's a buddy cop starring the Idiot and the Murder Man, this is not relevant until chapter two, writing this fic is giving me emotional whiplash, yes this is another Revan Remembers AU shut up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28700904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolfGirl01/pseuds/revanchxst
Summary: Malak, the only one she’s ever trusted, her best friend, her partner, her lover, one of the only people still alive who’s ever seen her face. The only person she’s ever needed, who promised when they were just children racing through the plains on Dantooine that he’d always be by her side, that it would always just be them against the galaxy - the person she shares her mind with, who she loves, who she would’ve torn the galaxy apart for, the other half of her soul.Malak betrayed her.Oh, Force.She’s alone.[or: Revan remembers. (with a bonus side of trauma)]
Relationships: Alek | Darth Malak/Female Revan, Canderous Ordo & Female Revan, Canderous Ordo & Mission Vao, Female Revan & Mission Vao, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	1. i can see you in my soul

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys! yes this is another new fic but no it shouldn't be super long, probably, i know where i'm going with it (it was going to be a oneshot and then i got over 7k in and went ....fuck this isn't a oneshot), i'm hoping to update like once a week. i wasn't planning to post it but i figured y'all deserved to know what i've been doing instead of working on the next chapter of quantus. so anyway - yes, i know, i've written a Revan Remembers fic before, but it was my first kotor fic and after 112k words of writing Revan (jesus fuck quantus is long) i have a much better understanding of her character and her, wait for it, TRAUMA. so i started thinking about like what it would really be like for her to wake up without her mask and her lightsabers, knowing that the only person in the galaxy she truly trusted had betrayed her, and.... well, this happened.
> 
> plus i couldn't resist the temptation for the Revan & Canderous team up we deserve. although every time they're onscreen together the mood shifts dramatically and it's kind of hilarious. but here we go! fic title is from "things we lost in the fire" by bastille; chapter 1 title is from "walk through the fire" by zayde wolf.
> 
> if yall want my stupidly long Revan spotify playlist that i listen to when i write and where most of my title songs come from, hit me up, i'll toss you a link.
> 
> please leave a comment!

When Revan wakes up, she knows, immediately, something is  _ wrong. _

She’s in less clothes than she’s worn in years and she can’t feel the familiar singing of her kyber crystals and when she opens her eyes there’s no comforting HUD between them and the world.

And she’s on a Republic ship with alarms blaring around her. That’s a fairly obvious tell, especially given that the last thing she remembers, she was staring down a Jedi strike team, sending an amused mental message to Malak that  _ this is all the Jedi could spare for me, I’m almost insulted. _

Malak.

What happened to him? She was on the  _ Vengeance, _ her flagship, and he was on the  _ Leviathan _ \- the ship she’d given him as his own command when he’d told her he no longer was content serving at her side. (She’d been grateful for the mask, for the shields on his side of the bond, when he’d brought that up - they’d been at each other’s sides for most of their lives and for an entire war and that had always been enough for him, to know that he was the only one she trusted, the only one she turned to. It was enough for him - until it wasn’t.)

The  _ Vengeance _ had been fired on, she thinks; they’d hit the bridge. She must’ve been knocked out by the blast. It’s strange, because there hadn’t even been a sign of  _ danger _ from the Force - she’s strong enough she could’ve saved herself if there had been, could’ve thrown up a shield - but there had been a flicker of something across the bond. A hint of an apology, almost, and something like a quickly-stifled warning, and then blackness.

The  _ Leviathan _ had been right next to the  _ Vengeance _ when it was fired on. And the only way a move against her from her own people could’ve come to fruition, without her knowing, without anyone stopping it, would’ve been if-

If-

If it’d come from the top. If it’d been Malak’s orders.

Malak, the only one she’s ever trusted, her best friend, her partner, her lover, one of the only people still alive who’s ever seen her face. The only person she’s ever needed, who promised when they were just children racing through the plains on Dantooine that he’d always be by her side, that it would always just be them against the galaxy - the person she  _ shares her mind _ with, who she loves, who she would’ve torn the galaxy apart for, the other half of her soul.

_ Malak _ betrayed her.

Oh, Force. 

She’s  _ alone. _

The bond is still in place, she can feel it, but she can’t feel more than a brief impression of a mind and shields on the far side, and it’s been  _ years _ since she was alone in her own head, since she was a teenager, and  _ Malak betrayed her. _

The Force is rising thick and choking around her, swirling with her own fear, and she puts a hand to her forehead and feels her own bare skin and she hasn’t been without her mask in almost seven years and she can’t  _ breathe, _ her lightsabers are gone and her mask is gone and  _ Alek is gone- _

The door hisses open. Revan is moving before she’s even fully registered it.

There’s a man in the door, in a Republic uniform (and she doesn’t understand but she can’t even  _ think), _ and his eyes go wide and he opens his mouth but he never has time to speak. She throws her hand out and the Force and her fear wrap around his neck and he’s choking, and then he’s dead. He’s dead and she’s  _ alone _ on a Republic ship with nothing but the Force. No weapons and no armor to hide behind.

Just her and the Force and the constant blaring sirens.

There’s a Republic uniform in a footlocker by the bunk she was sleeping on. Revan can’t bring herself to put it on, quite, can’t pick up the shoddy blaster or the even worse vibroblade set next to it like they’re waiting for her. She’s  _ Revan _ \- Dark Lord of the Sith, legend, hero, savior, conqueror, a hundred other titles besides - and she doesn’t  _ need _ a weapon to be lethal.

When she finds whoever did this to her - left her here like she’s some Republic soldier, and what the  _ Sith hells _ was that supposed to accomplish, why would she be free now when the Jedi had had her in their grasp? - she’ll destroy them, and then she’s going to find Malak and look him in the eyes and ask him  _ why. _

Why wasn’t she enough for him anymore? Why did he betray her? Why did he want to be alone?

(How could he  _ leave her _ like nothing they were ever mattered? Like he never held her in the dark after Dxun and whispered his love into her ear until she felt like something more than a broken, bloody wound wrapped in beskar skin? Like she never sat at his bedside in the medbay and clung to his hands and poured her soul into his until he finally opened his eyes to hers again?

How could he leave her when they were all they ever needed?)

She pulls on the Republic uniform with extreme distaste, pushes her multitude of braids back over her shoulders, and leaves the room. Her face is bare and it’s almost too much, her hands shaking at her sides, but she forces herself through the corridors, white and red and she’s been on enough ships like this to know exactly where everything is - it’s not the same familiar layout of a capital ship she could navigate in her sleep but that doesn’t matter - and she nearly panics when she sees the first patrol of Sith soldiers because  _ they can see her face, _ but they don’t even look at  _ her. _ They look at the Republic uniform and then they’re already firing.

She doesn’t need lightsabers to kill. The Force is just as much a weapon. This is something the Jedi never told her, but she’s never needed the Jedi to tell her how to use the Force.

She’s halfway to the bridge when she crosses through a blast door and stumbles across one of her Sith fighting a Jedi; she doesn’t have time to intervene before the Jedi strikes down the Sith, then falls as the ship is shaken by turbolasers and a blast of fire hits where she’s standing.

Terribly convenient for her, less so for the Jedi.

Revan pulls the robes off of the dead Sith and changes into them, leaving the Republic uniform discarded on the floor. The robes don’t have the same weight as she’s used to, and she’s missing the pieces of beskar she acquired through the Mandalorian Wars to armor herself, but at least they’re black, and at least there’s a heavy cloak she can pull on and lift the hood of. She takes both the lightsabers - one red, one green - and the kyber crystals within are too quiet but when she ignites the blades and twirls them around the sabers handle the same as hers. Her lightsabers, the ones she’s had for seventeen years of her life, are gone. Another casualty of M- of the betrayal.

These ones are horrible substitutes, and she hates the green color, but she doesn’t have much of a choice for now and so she twists the hilts through her fingers until she’s comfortable with them and then starts off towards the bridge again.

She has to kill another handful of her own patrols to get to the bridge, but she can’t reveal herself to them, not without a mask - not that they’d believe her even if she did, she’s sure. Everyone knows Revan is more mask than person - she’s a legend, not a human being, and she hates how without her mask every single weakness she has is visible to anyone with eyes and half a mind - and if she walked up to any of her soldiers and told them who she was they’d laugh and call her insane.

So she fights her way to the bridge, and discovers they’re in a rapidly-decaying orbit around Taris, which is halfway across the galaxy from where she’d been in the last memory she has, and what the  _ hells _ happened to her? How did she get here?

She can sense… someone here. A presence.

A familiar one, she realizes after a minute, leaving the bridge behind - it’s full of its dead command crew and the ship, the  _ Endar Spire, _ is going down and there’s no point trying to save it; she hadn’t spent much time with Malak’s apprentice, Bandon (a man with more ambition than power but enough shrewd cunning to make up for that lack), but she recognizes his Force signature anyway. If Malak’s sent Bandon here, does that mean he knows?

He can’t know. The way he’s shielding their bond is the way she would if she were trying to block out some unimaginable pain, and if he knew… if he knew, he’d be using the bond to try and find her. Whether that’s to apologize or to kill her, she doesn’t know, but- he’d be looking. After all their years together she doesn’t know how to exist on her own and she’s sure he doesn’t either.

(But he betrayed her. The only one she could ever trust.)

Revan steps through the doors at the far end of the bridge, her stolen lightsabers on her belt, and there’s a body on the ground that she nearly trips over, with a slim black half-mask on their face. Her eyes will still be visible, and some of her dark skin around them, but it’s more protection than nothing, and she can’t face anyone - can’t face  _ Bandon _ \- with her face bare.

So she pulls the mask off the body and fits it to her face.

And then she crosses the room to the next door and waves it open.

Bandon is on the far side, with a pair of Sith, sneering at the body of some dead Jedi on the ground. “What have we got here?” he asks, lifting his head and looking her over, the robes that don’t quite fit and the mismatched lightsaber hilts and the half-hidden face.

“Someone far out of your league, Bandon,” Revan responds, and she lets her voice drop into ice.

Bandon draws his lightsaber as she steps into the room. “You seem to have forgotten my title,” he snaps, and she  _ groans. _

“Don’t tell me Malak made  _ you _ a Darth. Really? I thought he had more sense than that.”

The Sith pauses, narrows his eyes and looks at her again. “Who are you to talk like that about the Dark Lord of the Sith?”

“Do you really not recognize my Force-signature?” she asks, ignites both her stolen lightsabers and shifts into the opening stance of Jar’kai. “Force, you’re either inept or Malak forgot how to teach once he changed his name.”

_ “No,” _ Bandon breathes, and she snorts. “You- you’re  _ dead, _ I watched him give the order to kill you.”

And that  _ hurts, _ twists like a lightsaber in her chest. She’d guessed, of course, but to hear it - to hear it from the mouth of his apprentice, that Malak really was the one to give the order, that he really did do it - it sends something hot and aching sweeping through her, burning behind her eyes, and  _ Force _ she misses her mask. 

“Look at you,” the Sith continues, and the tremor of fear in his voice is gone, though it still echoes into the Force around him. “You really cared for him that much. You deserved to be betrayed, in my opinion, if you were so blinded you couldn’t see it coming.”

Sheer  _ rage _ sparks white-hot across her skin, roars through her veins, and Revan bares her teeth behind her mask and lightning courses brilliantly blue-white down her sabers and the twin bolts hit Bandon’s Sith in the chest. They’re dead before they hit the ground and then she’s lunging forward, slashing both her sabers at his face. Bandon staggers backwards, blocks the first three blows, and then she’s wrapping the Force around her hands and flinging him into the wall. Could Malak really have tried to replace her with  _ him? _

“You have  _ no right,” _ she snarls, “to judge me or my emotions. You have  _ no idea _ what he and I went through together, and, frankly, you’re so far below me it’s absolutely ridiculous you thought you could challenge me and live. What were you planning to  _ achieve _ by taunting me, you idiot?” She stalks towards him, throws him against the wall again when he tries to get to his feet. “Before you call my love my weakness, maybe you should remember what I fell for in the first place.”

She lets him get to his feet and bring his saber up into a guard, and she’s nearly casual as she feints high and then cuts his saber arm off at the elbow with one blade, the other twirling to plunge into his chest.

She’s shaking.

How could Malak do this?

She doesn’t  _ understand, _ and that lack burns through her, leaves her aching and off-kilter and struggling to breathe. The Force swirls around her and she can taste her own uncertainty on its currents, and any of her Sith would see her and laugh at her weakness. 

But she meant what she said to Bandon. What  _ had _ she fallen for? For love, and for the desire to protect the galaxy, and for revenge.

Is that so terrible?

The ship is going down. Revan hangs her lightsaber hilts on her belt - steals Bandon’s and replaces the Jedi’s, because as much as she dislikes having a pair of red Sith-bled lightsabers the crystal in Bandon’s saber is more comfortable with her channeling the Dark Side through it - and takes the lift to the starboard side of the ship, where the escape pods are. The ship is losing orbit and fast, and she doesn’t intend to be on board when it crashes.

She survived one ship getting blown up. She’s not risking her luck on another.

Revan makes it into the room with the escape pods, has already started programming the only one left when there’s a noise and she spins to see a man looking at her from the corner of the room, dark brown hair and an orange jacket. A Republic soldier of some kind, she thinks.

“You’re that soldier the Jedi brought on board with them,” he says, and all Revan can do is  _ stare _ because a soldier, really?  _ Her? _ “I’m Carth Onasi. Not sure why you felt the need to leave behind the uniform, but-”

Revan steps forward, cutting him off. “I’m not a  _ soldier,” _ she says. “I’m Revan, and I’d really like to know what the  _ kriff _ I’m doing on this ship.”

The soldier - Carth, apparently - freezes for a long minute, staring back at her. She stays relaxed, though her hands hover near her stolen lightsabers (and she can see his eyes flashing down to note the lightsabers, the half mask, the cloak, and she doesn’t look like  _ herself _ but she looks as close as she could get given she woke up here with nothing), waits for his response. “That’s not possible,” he finally manages. “Revan is dead - Malak killed her a month ago, it’s the only reason the Republic’s made any progress against the Sith at all. You-  _ can’t _ be Revan.”

She arches an eyebrow, and knows he sees it because of the half mask. “Should I prove it to you somehow?” she asks. “How do you think I’ll look, when I’ve been betrayed, when I woke up on a Republic ship with no mask and no lightsabers?”

Carth is still just staring at her. “The Jedi brought you on board,” he says finally. “Bastila Shan, the commander in charge of this mission - you were with her.”

Bastila Shan. The name is familiar; she’s some padawan the Jedi Council had been certain would win them the war, gifted with battle meditation. She’d been there on the bridge before Malak fired on them.

This just raises more questions than answers, though. Why would she have been with the Jedi who tried to kill her? Why doesn’t she  _ remember _ it?

“If you really are Revan,” Carth continues after a moment of silence, “I can’t let you off this ship. Your death- Malak’s betrayal,” and Force but she wishes people would stop rubbing salt in that wound, “is the greatest victory the Republic’s had since the war started.” And he raises his blasters.

Revan sighs and pulls both lightsabers off her belt, ignites the vivid crimson blades. “I thought you were smart,” she says, and the flash of indignation that crosses his face would be funny in any other situation. As it is, the  _ Endar Spire _ is shuddering around them and she doesn’t have time for this. “Go on then, shoot me, since you’re so desperate to be the hero.”

Carth pauses, something like uncertainty flickering through his Force-signature. She doesn’t have  _ time _ for this, she has to get off this ship before it breaks to pieces and she needs to get off Taris and she needs to find Malak.

So she doesn’t give him a chance to change his mind.

Revan lunges forward, cuts both sabers through his blasters before he has a chance to even fire them, and then she repeats the motion and the Republic soldier is dead on the floor.  _ I’m sorry, _ she thinks to him as she turns to the escape pod - she probably could’ve recruited him, if she’d had the time, if the ship wasn’t falling to pieces around her and she wasn’t still raw from Malak’s betrayal.

But there’s nothing for it now.

She climbs into the escape pod, aims it at Taris, and jettisons away from the  _ Endar Spire _ as the ship shatters to pieces around her.

~

She’s on Dantooine, the wide grassy plains spread out around her, stunted scrubby trees and the mournful howls of the kath hounds and the soft babbling of the brook that tells her she’s far enough from the Enclave it’s nothing more than a shadow of a presence on the edge of her mind. The wind slips softly through her hair and her face is bare to the starlight and the full moons and she’s wearing tall boots and pale brown Jedi robes and her hands are bare. She knows, somehow, if she ignites the twin lightsabers resting on her belt, the blades will be purple and white.

She hasn’t been here in years. Hasn’t worn clothes like these in years. Hasn’t left her face bare in years. Hasn’t had a white lightsaber in years.

And yet in this moment, there’s nothing she wants more than to stay here forever.

(No matter what she’s done, where she’s gone, Dantooine will always be her home, even though she’ll never be able to return to it.)

She’s considering taking off her boots and socks, to dip her feet into the stream one last time, like she did on hundreds of hot summer days when her hair was stuck to the back of her neck with sweat and the grasslands baked in the heat of the sun, when there’s a rustling sound and something flares in the Force and somehow she knows before she turns who will be behind her.

He looks different, too. Gone are the crimson and black robes he favors, gone is the cortosis half mask he started wearing after the Mandalorian Wars, gone is the gold in his eyes and the harsh anger in his Force-signature. He doesn’t look like Malak, he looks like Alek,  _ her _ Alek, back before they went to war and back before she became a legend and back before she tore herself apart for the galaxy.

“Alek,” she whispers.

“No,” he says, shakes his head. She’d almost forgotten what his voice sounds like without a vocoder smoothing it out. “Not anymore, Revan. You made sure of that.”

It burns worse than any injury she’s ever felt to know that he’s right.

“I had to do it,” she says. Once, those words would’ve been the strongest she could say, all the certainty in the galaxy in their bones. Now, though, they feel like nothing more than a piece of flimsi, a frail excuse. “Everything I did, I had to do.”

“Did you?” Malak takes a step towards her, eyes staring into hers. “Did you have to go on this crusade? Couldn’t someone else save the galaxy, for once? You aren’t the only person you broke and remade to do this.”

She knows. When she tore herself apart at the seams and put herself back together as  _ Darth Revan, _ she ripped apart Alek too, turned him into a tool more than anything else. She broke  _ them _ and what they were when she put them back together was nothing more than a shadow of what they used to be.

“I wanted to save the galaxy,” she says quietly, and her voice is shaking. “You agreed with me, I didn’t do this on my own.”

“And how much of the galaxy were we going to destroy to save it?”

She thinks of Malachor. Of Telos. Of Onderon and Dxun and Lantillies and Thustra and Clefar.

“As much as it took,” she says quietly. “Why are you still fighting, Malak? If you don’t agree - why continue? If this was all my idea why haven’t you stopped it?”

He laughs, and it’s bitter and jagged-edged and it pierces deep into her heart. “Because I am what you made me, Revan. You turned me into the same person you are - someone who doesn’t know how to live without a war to fight.”

Her first instinct is to deny it, to say he’s wrong, to say that she doesn’t go looking for war, she didn’t start this war because she needed one, but- After Malachor, she’d been lost, drifting, until she made the decision to go into the Unknown Regions. Qatya had left and half her army was dead and Arren Kae was gone and there had been no war, nothing left to fight, nothing left to save.

And a savior is nothing without something to save.

“Why did you do it?” she asks him, and she hadn’t meant to, she wanted to see his face for true, she wanted to  _ be there _ when he answered, and yet- and yet she can’t stop herself. She has to know. The question has been burning through her since she woke up and  _ realized _ and now that she’s face-to-face with him, even if it’s just a dream - a dream facilitated by their bond, she’s certain - she can’t keep herself from asking.  _ “Why, _ Alek?”

“Because that’s what Sith do,” he says, and his voice is hollow.

Revan stops. Sits down on the grass.

She was the one who convinced Alek they needed to do more than just abandon the Jedi Code, that they needed a new one, that they needed to  _ be Sith. _ She was the one who drug them to Korriban and spent weeks in the tombs learning from ghosts and shades and holocrons. She was the one who built an Academy and gathered everyone she could and gave her Revanchists new names. She was the one who named herself  _ master _ and never even thought that Alek would be anything but her apprentice, that anyone  _ else _ would be her apprentice, that he would grow to resent her for her power and her position when all their lives he’d been her second. She was the one who called herself _ Darth _ and gave Alek the same title.

Which means there is no one else to blame for this but herself.

Oh, she could put the blame on Vitiate, sitting in the Unknown Regions spinning his web and building his empire; she could tell Malak he never had to make the choice, he could’ve left. But of course he couldn’t leave. Being apart is a physical pain for them, or was,  _ before; _ they’re one soul in two bodies (like the old stories of  _ soulmates _ children whisper about in the creches, one soul separated by the Force at birth) and they’ve been together for so long they aren’t two people. They haven’t been two people in  _ years. _

So Malak betrayed her, because it is what is expected of a Sith, and she made him a Sith to begin with.

“Oh,” she finally says, tonelessly.

For a long time, they don’t speak. She sits and twists her fingers through the grass and stares at the stream, and Malak stands behind her and watches her, the weight of his gaze heavy on the back of her neck. Then he sighs, and she hears rustling, and a familiar weight leans against her, and they’re sitting back to back on the grasses like they did when they were young. Revan closes her eyes and tilts her head back to lean against his, and her hand untwists from the grass and shifts until it finds his. He laces their fingers together in a motion so practiced and familiar it  _ aches. _

“Are you haunting me?” he whispers finally, and his voice  _ breaks. _

He hasn’t realized. He thinks this is just a dream. He probably hasn’t lifted the shields over their bond yet (not that she blames him; the pain of even a training bond breaking is  _ agony _ and their bond is far, far deeper than a training one, would be akin to killing part of himself), and so he doesn’t sense her signature here in this dream version of Dantooine.

She shouldn’t tell him. Not when she’s trapped on a planet full of an army now loyal to him, not when he tried to kill her, not when she has sabers that don’t belong to her and only half a mask and no allies.

But she’s so, so  _ alone. _

“No,” she says, after a minute. She squeezes his hand and hopes, prays he won’t pull away. “We’re dreaming. We used to do this before, remember?”

He doesn’t understand at first, she can tell. He squeezes her hand back and sighs a little and leans more against her and nods, just a twitch to avoid jostling her. “I remember,” he says, his voice soft and the fracture lines all-too-evident. “I-” and then he  _ stops. _ “What do you mean,  _ we?” _

“Drop your shields,” she says, and she pretends she isn’t shaking, pretends she isn’t terrified he’ll turn on her - he’s the only one she’s ever truly trusted and the only one who’s been with her since the beginning and never turned away no matter what she did and she  _ needs _ him. (If he tries to kill her again for true she’s not sure what she’ll do.) “Have you dropped them since you fired on me?”

Malak stiffens and pulls his hand away from hers, and she pulls away from him and turns to face him, though he’s not looking at her. “Of course I haven’t,” he says, nearly sharp. “Do you think I  _ wanted _ to feel half of me die?”

“Do it now,” she says, reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder. This time he flinches away from her touch. “If you ever trusted me, drop your shields.”

He stares at her. “How can you even ask that?” he asks in a hoarse rasp, and then his gaze goes distant for a heartbeat and she can  _ feel _ it as his shields come crashing down. His mind slots into place against hers, for a moment close enough to touch, and she could  _ sob. _

_ Hey, Squint, _ she murmurs mentally, a nickname she hasn’t used since they were padawans.

His eyes have gone wide and his entire presence is suffused with shock, with pain, with relief and horror twisted so close together she can’t tell which one he feels more. “You-”

And her eyes fly open and she sits up with a strangled gasp in the dingy apartment she’d crashed in on Taris after her escape pod landed.

Malak knows she’s alive. She can feel his presence properly now, though the bond is stretched thin from distance; she’s too far away from him to be able to tell what he thinks, how he  _ feels  _ about it. If he’s relieved she’s alive or if he’s going to try and kill her. Or both. Force knows  _ she _ wouldn’t react well if someone killed her apprentice, but it’s not like she had any choice, and the way Malak spoke-

_ Because that’s what Sith do. _

_ Do you think I  _ wanted _ to feel half of me die? _

If he didn’t do it because he  _ wanted _ to, if he killed her out of some kind of obligation to their code, then there’s a chance she could have him back. There’s a chance she won’t have to be alone.

(She doesn’t know how to be alone.)

Revan sighs, climbs out of the frankly terrible bed and makes a half-assed attempt at tugging the blanket over the mattress before giving it up as a lost cause; a glance at the chrono shows it’s still early, but at least there should be some people out, and so she tugs on her stolen robes and boots and cloak and mask, hooks her lightsabers to her belt - she’s going to have to find a way to craft a new set, with crystals that actually resonate properly with her - and stops in the fresher to splash water over her face before she absently summons her mask to her face and straps it on.

She hates how it leaves her eyes visible, but it’s better than nothing, and  _ her _ mask is more than likely lost, unless they recovered it from the wreckage. (And she’s  _ annoyed _ at Malak for destroying the  _ Vengeance; _ it’d been her flagship for seven years, had been the closest thing she’d had to a home since they left Dantooine.) With her hood up, most of her face is barely visible anyway, between the shadows; it’s not enough  _ protection, _ but it’s enough. It has to be enough.

Revan has only been onworld for a little over a day and she already hates Taris. She’s been here before, of course - Taris was the first battle of her offensive against the Mandalorians - but between the anti-alien sentiment and the gangs and the massive Exchange presence and the slave rings and the  _ rakghouls, _ the place is hardly pleasant, and restoring it to Republic control hadn’t seemed to change it much.

Of course, now it’s controlled by the Sith, blockaded until they find whoever it is they’re looking for - the Jedi that Republic soldier had mentioned, more than likely. Bastila Shan. Revan would be  _ proud _ of her army if it weren’t for the fact that she’s just as trapped as Shan.

She’d rather be staying in the Upper City - sure, it’s full of snobs, but at least it’s clean and mostly peaceful - but there’s too many of her own troops there and while none of them will recognize her face, if she gets caught on holo, Malak will know her even shrouded in robes, even if she didn’t carry lightsabers with her. And anyone with lightsabers is going to be suspect, and it’s unlikely she’ll be able to claim to be one of the Sith - her admin team is too good.

_ Force, _ she really never expected to be cursing her past self for building the bones of her empire on the best people she could find.

So here she is, in a dingy apartment in the Lower City that was infested by a swoop gang before she killed them all and took it over. She’d cleared out the whole complex too, partly because they wouldn’t let her pass and partly as a warning, and since no one attacked her in her sleep last night it must’ve worked out well.

Never let it be said lightsabers can’t do the talking for her.

She’s not sure how she’s going to get offworld. She’d prefer to have a set of proper lightsabers when she goes to find Malak, just in case he decides to try and kill her, but she also doesn’t intend to leave him in charge of their empire - for one, without both of them their plan to take over the Republic and prepare it to face Vitiate won’t work. To do  _ anything _ other than get taken straight to Malak, or shot on sight, she can’t stay on Taris.

But with the blockade, none of the legitimate transport service are running, and whoever dumped her on the  _ Endar Spire _ didn’t seem to think she’d need credits, which means that as much as she hates it, her only options are to either steal a Sith ship (which Malak will be able to track) or to throw in with the Exchange.

Force take it, but she’s going to go with the Exchange.

She gets lucky. Not far from her apartment, on the way to the local cantina, there’s a pair from one of the local swoop gangs - the Vulkars, who are frankly insufferable, the kind of criminal organization she  _ detests _ because they don’t even seem to have a plan, just like to lord their power and status over everyone else - being approached by one of the local Exchange boss’ collectors, something about credits owed. Predictably, the Vulkars are blustering and refusing to pay up, and Revan is just about to step in and offer her services in dealing with the fools when the collector whistles.

The man who walks up - probably forty years old, silver hair and a scar and a sharp grin, with a heavy repeating blaster that  _ screams _ Mandalorian even if he isn’t wearing any armor to speak of - is familiar in a way Revan can’t place, and just the threat of him has the Vulkars bowing. The name they call him is familiar too, though she can’t quite place why at first other than the obvious: Canderous Ordo.

Why does she know that name?

He’s starting to walk off by the time it clicks, with a flash of memory of a blood-soaked jungle and a desperate fight on a rooftop. “Ordo,” she calls, and the man barely pauses, though there’s the slightest hitch to his stride that confirms he heard her. “There were a pair of you at Onderon and Dxun - you were commanding the basilisk companies. I remember now. The ground commander on Iziz - sister? You look a little familiar.”

Ordo whips around so fast all her instincts have her reaching for her lightsabers, and it’s all she can do not to ignite them. He stalks towards her, every ounce a predator, and Revan doesn’t let herself show fear, doesn’t let herself flinch, just holds his eyes and says, soft and cold, “Don’t do something you’ll regret, warrior.”

He stops less than a meter from her, something sharp in his eyes, staring her down and flexing his fists like he wants to grab her and slam her into the wall. He refrains, though, which is good - she’d hate to have to kill her best chance at getting off this rock. “How do you know that?” he asks in a dangerously low voice. “You may want to avoid doing something  _ you’ll _ regret, yourself,  _ jetii.” _

“I am  _ really _ not a Jedi,” she says in a similarly quiet voice. “And I know because I was there. Your sister surrounded her command center with mines, which was a  _ dirty trick _ given she was set up on a rooftop. I didn’t appreciate how she killed my entire strike team before they could even attack her.”

Ordo takes two large steps forward until he’s right in her face. Revan lifts her chin and stares him down with durasteel in her eyes. “Who  _ are _ you,” he hisses, and it’s not a question.

“Isn’t it obvious?” she asks. “I’m Revan.”

It’s not as much a surprise as she wishes it was that he laughs in her face, though he still looks like he’s about to murder her with his bare hands. Bringing up Jetna Ordo may not have been the smartest decision she’s ever made. “I should’ve expected a Jedi to be a liar,” he says, and Revan tilts her head to one side, refuses to be intimidated by the man, even though he’s quite a bit larger than her and she’d really like him out of her space.

“I can prove it,” she says, and this is  _ also _ not the smartest decision she’s ever made, but he’s not in beskar and he’s not in a basilisk and she has enough experience fighting Mandalorians to know every move he’ll make. “Right before I killed him, Mandalore the Ultimate yielded to me, in a duel  _ he’d _ been the one to call to the death.”

“You filthy  _ liar,” _ Ordo snarls, with more venom in his voice than she’s ever heard from  _ anyone _ before, and then he’s bringing up one fist to swing at her head and his other arm coming towards her neck. Revan wraps the Force around her hands and  _ pushes _ before he has the chance to hit her, sends him flying back.

“If we’re going to fight, do it properly,” she snaps at him, and she pulls out both her lightsabers.  _ “Te jatne verd ven’parji.” _

May the best warrior win. The same ritual combat phrase Mandalore had said to her before she’d fought him on Malachor. He’d said it in Basic back then, but she’d taught herself the Mando’a afterward, just in case.

Ordo’s face twists in something between a grimace and a scowl. “Your accent is  _ awful,” _ he says. “And no outsider has the right to speak our language.” He brings up his blaster and fires several shots at her, and she dodges them and deflects them as she moves to close the gap between them.

“Am I still an outsider if I killed your  _ Mand’alor? _ I studied your culture, you know, I know how you pass down that title.” She swipes her sabers at the blaster and he drops it before she can cut it in half, aims a kick at the pit of her stomach that she remembers to dodge just in time - she’s too used to having beskar protecting her weak spots. He draws a vibrosword and a dagger, and then he’s lunging at her again and she’s batting away his strikes with ease (mostly - he’s  _ strong _ and alright, so she’s out of practice fighting Mandalorians), and it’s an instinct to go to crash her saber into his shoulder where there’s a gap except- “Where the Sith hells is your beskar, anyway? I hate having to pull my blows.”

Ordo reverses his dagger and punches her in the face, above the mask, hard enough she feels something  _ crack, _ and Force damn it she’s not used to the lack of  _ protection. _ Starbursts flare across her vision and it’s instinct and the Force that let her snap her sabers up to block the overhead strike he brings in across her blinded side. “I don’t need armor to kick your ass,” he growls, and wow, he sounds  _ angry. _

Gods, she’s going to have a black eye for a  _ week _ now. “Should I dig up a basilisk droid for you, then?” she asks, and there’s blood in her mouth that she can’t spit out because of the mask, and she brings her sabers in a lightning-quick series of attacks that force him away from her. “You won’t be any help to me if I cut your arm off.”

There’s a small crowd starting to form around them now, and Revan turns off both sabers and brings her forearms up to block a series of punches Ordo throws at her - and kriffing  _ hells _ that hurts a lot more without bracers - and takes a moment to cast a glare around her. “If I see anyone recording this I’m killing them,” she shouts, and Ordo actually gives her a grim smile.

“And I’m helping,” he says loudly. The spectators actually back up a bit at that.

He’s still smiling a little and for a heartbeat his offense slows, so Revan takes the chance to bash her saber hilt into his face.

Ataru isn’t her favored form, even though she’s  _ good _ at it, but she pulls from its repertoire anyway to handspring back away before he can retaliate, kicking him in the chin for good measure as she goes, then igniting her lightsabers again and settling back into a stance. “Seriously,” she says to him, “beskar. I know you have a set.”

The Mando’a phrase he mutters under his breath isn’t one she knows, but she knows enough to know it’s not a compliment. 

“Are you  _ trying _ to get me to kill you?” he asks.

She shrugs one shoulder, then twists to the side to avoid a kick, sweeps one saber at his leg and flashes the other back and forth to block first his sword, then his dagger. “I highly doubt you’ll follow me on the stunt I’m trying to pull if you don’t at least  _ try _ to kill me and lose.”

His anger has settled, she notices; he still looks and feels like he plans to kill her, but he’s actually cracking a proper smile as he engages her again. “Whoever you are,  _ dar’jetii,” _ and the way he says the word she’s fairly sure he’s laughing at her insistence she’s not a Jedi, “you at least have a better understanding of my culture than most - though that’s not hard to do.”

“You can’t fight an enemy you don’t understand.” Revan feints high, then brings both her sabers crashing towards his knees, very nearly scores a hit before he manages to throw her off by bringing his dagger at her shoulder. “The Republic didn’t promote me so high because of my looks.”

“If the Republic promoted you at all,” he retorts, but there’s something nearing approval in his voice now. “You’re a good fight, I’ll give you that, but there are a lot of good fighters with lightsabers.”

“A lot less than you’d think, actually,” and Revan  _ finally _ manages to score a line down the outside of his left arm, and he curses at her. “None of the Jedi could ever keep up with me.”

Ordo cocks his head to one side and raises an eyebrow. “You fight more like a Mandalorian than a Jedi.”

That’s a compliment, she knows, and it’s one she wouldn’t have been able to accept four years ago. Now, though, she smiles a little behind the mask, though she knows he can’t see it. “Thank you,” she says, ducks under his upraised arm and elbows him in the side and spins and nearly brings her sabers to his neck before he catches up to the motion. Is he a little slower to react now than he was earlier? 

He’s got to be getting tired.

He seems to have relaxed too - maybe she can get him to give up now if she pulls him into a defeat. So she lets him lock his sword with both her sabers, lets him bear down on her with all his strength, and she pulls the Force into her bones and grits her teeth and  _ holds on. _ Just a little further, then she can turn one saber off and press the hilt to his neck, and then-

She senses the dagger coming for her neck too late to block it, can only move to one side in a desperate twist,  _ shoving _ back against his sword to give her the room to straighten up, and she can feel cold metal against her chin and then she’s pushing back from him and-

And-

The half mask she’s been wearing clatters to the ground.

Her face is  _ bare. _

White-hot anger and  _ fear _ crashes through her and Revan bares her bloody teeth and  _ snarls _ and the voice that tears itself from her throat doesn’t even sound human, and her hands around her sabers are clenched so tight her knuckles are white. “Even  _ Fett _ never dared take off my mask,” she growls, and the Force is a raging storm boiling around her and she grabs onto it  _ tight. _

A wave of her hand sends Ordo slamming into the wall - causing spectators to scatter - and Revan hooks one saber on her belt, curls her hand into a claw and holds him trapped against the wall, unable to move, and she walks towards him slow and steady with her eyes locked on his.

“You’re going to find out why.”

She twists her wrist and his weapons fly from his hands, and yet somehow there’s no fear in his eyes, just a profound look of  _ awe _ and something like respect, and she’s choking on her rage and he should be  _ terrified. _

_ “Revan,”  _ he breathes out, like a benediction, like a prayer, and he  _ grins. _

The smile is so utterly unexpected she stops, for a second (and her face is bare, he can  _ see her face), _ just stands there staring at him.

“I can’t believe I just almost won a fight against  _ Revan,” _ Ordo continues, and he’s  _ laughing _ now and what the Sith hells? The Force slides from her grasp and she nearly absently calls her mask to her free hand, returns it to her face as quickly as she can, and he’s just leaning against the wall laughing like a madman.

“The hells is wrong with you?” she demands, and all he does is grin wider and laugh harder. “I could’ve killed you with a thought - was about to, in fact - and you’re  _ laughing?” _

Ordo wipes his eyes, stands up and crosses over to where his weapons are scattered on the ground, picks them up and starts returning them to their places. “That was the best fight of my life,” he proclaims. “Whatever you’re planning, I’m your man now.”

Sometimes, Revan really doesn’t understand Mandalorians.


	2. like we forgot who we can trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI I'M BACK i'm sorry this took so long writing is ksjfhdksjdfhg atm, and i hate half this chapter, but here, have some angst, and drama, and pain, and did i mention pain?
> 
> leave a comment if you enjoy!
> 
> chapter title is from "go to war" by nothing more

Revan takes Canderous back to her shitty apartment, after threatening violence to the various spectators of their fight, most of whom she’s sure heard her name. She dislikes relying on threats to keep her name from spreading around, but she doesn’t want the Sith getting word that she’s here, and while she’s sure they’ll ignore one or two reports, if some ten or twenty people all start throwing her name around, only utter fools and incompetents would ignore it. And Revan’s empire doesn’t suffer either of those.

“So Malak betrayed you,” Canderous Ordo says, snagging a chair and straddling it, leaning on the back with his arms folded across the top. “I assume you want revenge.”

 _“No,_ I don’t want revenge,” Revan snaps, flopping down on the flea-bitten couch and scowling, though the expression loses some of its potency behind a mask. Malak would’ve understood. “I want to fix things.”

“He tried to kill you,” Canderous says, raising an eyebrow, though he looks amused more than anything else.

“Yes, and? Don’t try to tell me you’ve never had a lover nearly kill you before.”

The Mandalorian shrugs. “Alright, fair. Didn’t think you Jedi had the same relationship problems we do, though.”

Revan rolls her eyes. “I told you, I’m not a Jedi. I haven’t been one since sometime during the Mandalorian Wars. Why does everyone keep bringing up his betrayal anyway? Do they think I have no emotions or something?” _Honestly,_ can’t she go one day without being reminded that her partner turned on her? It aches badly enough not having him by her side as it is.

“You didn’t seem to have much in the way of emotion during the war,” Canderous says.

Revan _glares,_ feels a wave of heat rise up within her. “Say that again,” she says, low, “I dare you.” The Force is a swelling wave at her back and it would be easy to reach out and touch it, but she doesn’t, not yet. Not quite. Because she _needs_ him.

Needing him doesn’t change the fact that she’d really like to strangle him right now.

“Touchy, are we?” He grins at her. “I think we established I could take you in a fight, especially with my beskar’gam.”

“I didn’t use the Force,” she snaps. “If I wanted to, I could kill you without ever touching you.”

Canderous chuckles and leans more into the chair. “That’s handy. Too bad you couldn’t do it back when you fought us.”

She shoves to her feet and stalks across the room to him, cloak swirling behind her. “If all you’re going to do is insult me, I’ll find someone else to help me steal a ride off Taris.”

“I’m just returning the favor, Revan. You insulted my Mand’alor, after all.”

It takes her a moment to remember through the anger, and then that anger prompts her to say, sharp, “I wasn’t lying, though. He _did_ yield to me, or try to.”

Canderous doesn’t even move, so much. One moment he’s sitting, then the next he’s slugging her in the face so fast she doesn’t have a _hope_ of dodging, and then the next he’s back in his chair again, glaring at her. “Don’t,” he says.

“Don’t what?” she asks, raising her eyebrows and grimacing as she brushes her fingers over her face where his fist hit. “Don’t tell the truth about your leader, who challenged me to single combat because he knew he was going to lose the battle?”

Canderous is on his feet now, still straddling the chair, eyes going cold. “At least he had _honor,”_ he spits out, clenches his fist.

She shouldn’t provoke him. But Malak has betrayed her and she’s been off-balance ever since she woke up on the _Endar Spire_ and there’s a hole in her chest and the vicious satisfaction she feels at getting a reaction helps for a moment to fill it. “And a lot of good that _honor_ did him when he was begging me to take him prisoner instead of kill him.”

“At least he didn’t destroy his own army for a meaningless victory!”

Revan sees _red._ There’s a clattering sound as the chair is thrown out of the way, and before she’s even fully realized what she’s doing she’s tackling Canderous to the ground and punching him in the face with all the force she can muster. “You _bastard,”_ she hisses, hands going for his throat. “I didn’t _want_ to kill them! But I didn’t have a _choice!”_

He knees her in the back and twists his hips and flips them and then they’re rolling across the ripped grey carpet as she shoves a hand in his face and a knee into his crotch. He curses and headbutts her and she feels something crack in her face. “There’s always a choice,” he gasps out, gets both hands on her shoulders pressing her flat on the floor.

“Yeah, sure,” she growls. “You could’ve chosen not to go to war. _I’m_ choosing to do this.”

And she punches him in the throat.

Canderous reels back, his weight shifting off her shoulders, and Revan shoves herself upright and drives her shoulder into his chest, her elbow into the pit of his stomach, her fingers into his ribs, and then she’s throwing all her weight at his shoulders, knocking him backwards off her legs. “You love the violence as much as we do,” he chokes out as he falls, and then he punches _her_ in the stomach and knocks all the breath from her lungs, leaves her flailing for a moment. “You love the war. It’s in your blood. That’s the real reason you turned on the Republic, isn’t it, Revan? You needed the rush of victory.”

For half a second, she _freezes,_ the words too much an echo of Malak’s last night, in her dreams, and in that moment of weakness Canderous wrestles her to the ground and pins her. Revan reaches up and grabs his upper arms and puts all her strength into it and _flings_ him over her head, nearly flipping herself over with the motion, and then she’s yanking one of her sabers up and putting the hilt unlit at his throat. They’re flat on their backs, heads nearly touching, and her chest is heaving and her body shaking but her hand is deathly steady on her saber, finger hovering over the ignition switch. “So I guess we’re alike, then,” she says, and she hates how her voice is too quiet. “If all I am is a conqueror like you, why shouldn’t I kill you right here?”

There’s a heartbeat of silence, then Canderous lets out a wheezing chuckle. “Look to your left,” he says, and she twists her head.

His dagger is poised to tear straight through her throat.

“Well played,” Revan murmurs, and lets her hand sag to the floor. A part of her is furious for losing a fight, to a Mandalorian without beskar, no less, but mostly she’s just _tired._

Back during the Mandalorian Wars, before she realized she could never go back, she used to dream of just taking Alek and spending the rest of their lives so far out on the plains of Dantooine the Jedi could never find them. Where they’d be free, and at peace, and she could finally just be Revan again, instead of the mask and the legend. By the time she’d attacked Onderon and Dxun, she’d known it would never happen - she could never go home. She’d never be able to be at peace.

All she’s ever been meant for is war.

“I’m a warrior,” she whispers into the empty space above her head. “All I know how to do is fight, and when I run out of enemies, I make new ones.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Canderous says gruffly. “Except for when you lead a galactic army.”

Revan sighs, pulls her hand back and returns her lightsaber to her belt. “Are we done fighting?” she asks him, tries to push aside the heavy exhaustion threatening to swallow her. It’s so much easier when she’s on the bridge of a starship plotting her next conquest.

“I’m not the one who started this one,” he points out. “But I’m done if you are. We’re just wasting time at this point.”

“Kolto?” she asks as she sits up, feeling every inch of her body _ache._ She probably has a concussion too, and her nose is bleeding. _Hells._

“Kolto,” Canderous says decisively.

~

A few hours later, after a visit to the medical clinic in the Upper City, Revan flops down onto the ragged couch in her stolen apartment, a kolto pack pressed against one eye. Canderous returns to the chair he’d claimed earlier, medical tape across the bridge of his broken nose and kolto smeared over his throat. “Do you have a plan?” he asks her, leaning against the back of the chair.

“I have half of one,” Revan says, wincing and shifting the kolto pack. “We’ll need the codes from the local garrison if we’re going to get offworld.”

Canderous nods, thoughtful. “We need a ship,” he says, “and I think I know where we can get one.”

Revan raises an eyebrow.

“I have the codes to Davik Kang’s estate,” the Mandalorian continues, nearly cheerful. The local Exchange boss, if she remembers correctly, someone Revan doesn’t mind from stealing from in the slightest. “I am - _was_ \- his enforcer. He has a Corellian YT model he used for smuggling, fastest in the sector.”

“We could steal it,” Revan says, nodding, already working through the logistics. “We’d need to sneak in, deactivate whatever security he has, and get out before news spread of a breakin at the Sith garrison.”

“I shouldn’t be seen at the base. It’s common knowledge that I’m with Davik - if the Sith catch sight of me, they’ll be all over Davik’s estate before we can get in.”

“Trust me, we won’t be seen,” she tells him. “I can get us in and out before they know we’re there.” She may not have conquered Taris personally, not this time, but she knows her empire’s operating procedures. She wrote half of them herself - or rather, Malak wrote them while she complained about the ridiculous amount of _paperwork_ involved in taking over the galaxy. That doesn’t mean she hadn’t paid attention, though.

Canderous nods. “I can get myself a set of that _osik_ they call armor and pose as your escort,” he suggests. “Shouldn’t be hard for you to pretend to be one of them.”

“It won’t be,” she says. “The governor won’t buy it, but we don’t need him to. If you pick up a set of armor tonight, we can move on the base as soon as tomorrow, be off Taris within a week.”

“I can. I have a couple things to do for Davik anyway, or he’ll get suspicious. I’ll lay low at my place tonight, meet you here in the morning with the armor?” He’s relaxed, casually confident, but he asks her approval anyway, which she appreciates.

“It’ll keep word from spreading,” she says, then sighs and leans her head back against the back of the couch. “Although, I don’t like how many people heard you use my name earlier, and threats only do so much.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Canderous twists his dagger between his fingers, meets her eyes and gives her a little smile. And Revan has no qualms about removing people who know too much, that’s what HK is _for,_ but this is hardly their fault - but everything hangs in the balance here, and she won’t falter. So she nods at him, and he pushes to his feet. “See you tomorrow, Revan,” he says, and then he chuckles. “Ha, if only my clan could see me now.”

It’s been four years, but apparently, she’s still revered by the Mandalorians. It makes her lips twitch a little in a smile he can’t see. Once, the thought would’ve angered her - how dare the Mandalorians, who razed so much of the galaxy, who destroyed planets without reason, compare themselves to her. She hadn’t wanted their respect, just their deaths. Now, though - well, she supposes they aren’t so different after all. She understands the desire to prove themselves through battle, and Canderous had been right: she needs a war to fight. No matter what she may have told herself to justify her attack on the Republic, no matter that she needed to protect them from Vitiate, the very first reason she did it was because she didn’t know what to be if she wasn’t Supreme Commander.

“See you tomorrow,” she acknowledges, and Canderous gives her a jaunty wave as he leaves, the door hissing closed and locking behind him. For all that he’s too good at picking out her weak spots, she almost likes him - he’s honest with her and he doesn’t treat her like a legend, like a hero that can do no wrong.

Not to mention, _Force,_ he can throw a punch.

She spends the next several hours trawling through the HoloNet activity for the last month - the Republic soldier, Carth, had said it’s been a month since she “died”, and she needs to know what her empire has accomplished since then. Malak’s been doing a decent job, it looks like, has taken several more sectors on the Outer Rim, has even established a solid foothold on Manaan; once she takes her empire back from him, fixes things between them, they’ll be well on their way to securing the Republic against Vitiate. He’s lost a lot more than she would’ve, which means that even with the Star Forge it’s possible the Republic could beat him back just by sheer numbers, but once Revan gets back that won’t be a problem.

Revan shifts on the couch and winces as her aching muscles complain - that brawl this morning wasn’t the greatest idea, especially given she’s going to need to be at the top of her game to take her empire back. She can almost picture the _look_ on Malak’s face if he could see her now, his exhausted, exasperated fondness.

Or at least, that’s how he would’ve looked at her before. The longer they waged war on the Republic, the more Sith they became, the less she saw that familiar look. The less she saw anything on his face at all.

But she’ll fix this. She’ll find a way to rebuild what she tore apart when winning one war was no longer enough.

She’ll bring _Alek_ back.

Those are the thoughts she clings to as she drags herself into the fresher, takes a shower and climbs into bed, tugs the thin blankets over her shoulders and closes her eyes. Even though it’s been months since she and Malak really shared a bed, it still feels strange to curl up to sleep alone. 

She finds herself hoping she doesn’t dream about him again tonight. She’s not sure she wants to know what his reaction to her survival is.

And the Force must hear her, because when sleep finally comes, Malak isn’t there.

But _someone_ is.

Revan is on Dantooine again, but this time, she’s not surrounded by the plains, as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. No, these walls are just as familiar, and in the opposite way: this is a meditation room in the Enclave, one of the rooms that’d always left her feeling trapped and claustrophobic, and she’s tensing, hands going to her lightsabers, before she can think any better of it. Her face is bare, but she’s wearing her comfortable black robes and her armor, and that’s the only thing that keeps her steady as she looks around. There are mats woven from dried grass on the floor and all she can think of is kneeling on the floor as Vrook paced past her, glaring when he met her eyes because she was supposed to be _focusing_ but all she wanted to do was take Alek’s hand and _run_ until there’s nothing but grass for miles and miles around her.

It takes too long for her to realize she’s not alone in the room.

There’s a young woman kneeling on a meditation mat, eyes closed, taking deep, rhythmic breaths, and she looks too-pale beneath her dark hair and her brown robes. She hasn’t noticed Revan, it seems, and that’s- odd, because Revan can _feel_ her Force-signature. It’s a familiar one, though she can’t place why for a minute. The girl shifts and light glints off the dualsaber hilt on her hip and _oh._

Bastila Shan. The padawan Revan faced on the bridge of the _Vengeance,_ the one Malak is looking for, the one the Jedi believe will win this war for them. Bastila Shan is in her dream, _properly._ Why is the last face she saw before the blackness and waking up on a Republic ship _here?_

“Well,” Revan says. “This explains nothing.”

Bastila’s eyes fly open and the girl flinches back against the wall, somehow going even more pale. “How-” she starts, and then she sucks in a sharp breath. “You- you shouldn’t be here.”

“Dantooine is my home,” Revan answers, leans against the nearest wall and tries to hide how the dusty air and her bare face make her skin itch. “Though if I’d chosen the place, we’d be out on the plains - I’ve always hated the Enclave.”

Bastila’s eyes go even wider, somehow. “How do you know where we are?” she asks, and there’s something in her voice- Revan can’t quite place it.

“I know without the mask no one recognizes me,” she sighs, “which is good, actually, I hate it when people can see what I’m feeling, but I know you recognize my Force-signature.” The walls of the Enclave are too close and she straightens again, crosses her arms, glances around the room again like that could hide her discomfort. “What I don’t understand is why _we’re_ sharing a dream, or why you look so pale.”

“You remember,” the padawan says on an indrawn breath, scrambles to her feet, though she’s shakier than she should be for some reason. “Master Vrook said-”

Revan _spins,_ one lightsaber snapping out before she can stop herself. “What about Vrook?” she asks, voice low and dangerous. “What did he try to do to me?”

She would’ve expected Vrook to have her killed. The Jedi had had her at their mercy, she _knows_ that. Carth thought she was a _soldier._ Even Malak and Bandon thought she was dead. There’s some month of time she’s missing and she can’t seem to figure out where it went, and _you remember,_ Bastila says.

No. No, they _did not-_

“They tried to wipe my memory,” she says, and the way Bastila flinches a little, she knows she’s right. “Why would they ever think that was a good idea?”

“I couldn’t let you die!” Bastila says, snaps it nearly, and that’s- unexpected. It doesn’t make sense. Revan is _the_ Sith Lord, as far as the Republic knows, and Vrook had hated her enough back when she was a Jedi and she went to war to save them all. The padawan pales a little, but there’s something fierce in her eyes, like she’s daring Revan to argue. “It isn’t the Jedi way, and besides - you were our greatest hero. The Council doesn’t like to admit it, because you _fell,_ but you saved the galaxy. I couldn’t just let you die.”

She’s from Dantooine, she would’ve been raised by Vrook and Vandar, and yet- and yet Bastila Shan speaks with _passion_ about about saving Revan’s life, about the _Jedi way,_ and it shouldn’t be possible that anyone who calls Vrook _master_ could understand what the Jedi are supposed to be, and yet. “The Council doesn’t like to admit it because they’ve never _liked_ me,” Revan says, and forces herself to return her lightsaber to her belt, even though it leaves her too defenseless in this room where she’s never felt anything but trapped. “Vrook has hated me since I was a child.”

It feels like every other memory of her years on Dantooine is soaked with the old master’s glare, his derision, his judgement, his _condemnation._ He’d snapped at her for the grass stains on her robes and he’d snapped at her for her temper and he’d snapped at her the day she chose to go to war, because if the Jedi Council wouldn’t do something, wouldn’t help, _she would._ And every time she’d been forced to comm the Council with news during the war, she’d seen the way he stared at her mask, and his eyes had _burned._ He’d never called her anything other than _Supreme Commander,_ then.

And then she’d gone off into the unknown, searching for a shadow of a threat and searching for another war.

“Jedi don’t _hate,”_ Bastila says, but she doesn’t look certain, and there’s not much force behind her words. She looks- she looks like she’s seeing something she doesn’t _want_ to.

Revan crosses her arms across her chest, raises an eyebrow. “This plan of theirs,” she says, “the one to wipe my mind - they wanted to use me as a weapon against Malak?” It’s the only thing that makes sense. “Did Vrook agree with it?”

The way Bastila shifts, the way her grey eyes darken, Revan knows the answer is _no._

“He argued you were too dangerous to be left alive,” she says quietly. “That we couldn’t trust you wouldn’t turn against us again.”

“Had the mind wipe worked,” Revan says, and she doesn’t want to admit this but she knows it’s true, “I wouldn’t have. They would’ve made me human again.”

And Bastila is just _staring._ “What- do you mean, made you human?” she asks. She doesn’t understand and it’s so obvious, the only one who _could_ is Malak. (And maybe Canderous. Force, the Mandalorians probably understand her better than anyone else besides Malak, after everything she’s been through, after everything she’s done.)

How _can_ she understand? She’s just a padawan, she probably hasn’t fought in any battles, much less had to make the kind of decisions Revan has had to make. “I’m not a _person_ anymore,” Revan says, finally, straightening, and she finally gives into the itch under her skin and begins to pace. “I’m a mask, a legend, a savior. I’m _Revan._ It’s not a name, it’s a title, one I’ll never be able to escape. I was hardly human to the galaxy _before_ I destroyed a planet to crush my enemies, and after? How do you think the galaxy would see a person who gave that kind of order and just stood there as it was carried out?”

Bastila is half-frozen, half-reeling, too many emotions flashing across her face to be understood. “Of course you’re _human,”_ she manages. “It doesn’t matter what decisions you’ve made, they don’t negate your humanity.”

“I sacrificed my humanity to keep the galaxy from burning,” Revan says flatly. “I sacrificed my Jedi morals at Dxun and I sacrificed my humanity at Malachor and I tore myself apart when I took the title _Darth,_ and there is nothing you or I or anyone can do to change that.”

She made herself into a Sith and she modeled Alek- Malak after her and she turned on the Republic she killed her _self_ to save and it doesn’t matter that Vitiate is in the Unknown Regions, preparing to attack the Republic, that he orchestrated the war with the Mandalorians to begin with, because Revan is a warrior and a warlord, a savior and a conqueror, a legend and a nightmare. She is a myth and a mask and she did this to _herself_ because somewhere in all the blood and the death and the devastation she forgot how to live without the weight of the universe on her shoulders.

And she did it to Malak, too. More than anything else, that just might be the greatest crime she’s ever committed.

“You could help the Jedi,” Bastila says. “You were our best, Revan, you could come back, help us stop Malak, save the Republic like you did before. You don’t have to-”

“To what?” Revan interrupts. “I don’t have to be a Sith? I _chose_ this, Bastila. Half the reason I turned on the Republic is to protect it from what I found out in the Unknown Regions.”

“And the other half?”

She doesn’t want to answer that. It’s one thing to admit it to herself, but another to say it to a padawan who thinks of her as a hero, who looks at her and sees the legend without even realizing it, who calls Vrook _master_ and yet somehow still thinks of Revan as just as human as she is. “Because I don’t know how to live without a war to fight.”

The words burn her lips as they escape and she wishes she could take them back.

Bastila is just _looking_ at her, and the expression on her face - this is why Revan wears a mask, why she hates letting anyone see her emotions, her _weaknesses._ “You’re telling me the truth,” Bastila says. “I wasn’t expecting you to.”

Revan snorts, and this is a dream and yet she feels so _exhausted._ “How do you know?” If Revan was in the padawan’s shoes, she’d be suspicious of everything she heard - Sith are not to be trusted, the crechemaster drilled that into her head when she was young.

“The bond,” Bastila says, and- oh. _Oh._ She doesn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her sooner, but of course there would have to be a bond, it’s the only way they’d be sharing a dream like this. “When I saved your life, it created- a bond between us, and that’s the only reason I can feel the Force at all right now, I believe.”

That’s- concerning. Revan frowns, looks the Jedi over again, and she’d noticed how pale she was before but now she looks _worse._ “What’s wrong?” she finds herself asking, even though it shouldn’t matter, even though she has no reason to _care_ about this padawan who tried to kill her (and who saved her).

She has no reason to care. But she can’t control when the dream releases her, and so she might as well ask.

“When my escape pod crashed on Taris,” Bastila says quietly, “I was captured by one of the swoop gangs. The Vulkars, I believe.” Revan knew she didn’t like them for a reason. “They put me in a neural disruptor collar, and their original plan was to use me as a prize for the swoop season opener, but I believe they intend to sell me as a slave, now. Jedi fetch a high price on the markets and with the collar I can’t fight back.”

Neural disruptors are one of the only things in the galaxy that can keep a Jedi from the Force; they do it through pain, and through something that makes it impossible to _focus._ Slavers and bounty hunters tend to use them the most, and they’re- they’re _inhumane._

The first time Revan had taken Taris, when she’d wrested it back from the Mandalorians, she’d stood in the slave markets and watched, hands behind her back, as her Revanchists and her soldiers broke open cages, tore off collars and cuffs. Not all of those collars had been simple shock collars. She’d ordered the markets destroyed, anyone she could find associated with the Exchange shipped back to the Republic for sentencing, because even as a Sith slavery has _never_ been something she could stand. Revan is a warrior and a warlord, yes, but she turned herself into one out of compassion, out of an inability to ignore the galaxy’s suffering.

“The swoop race, you said?” Revan says thoughtfully. Canderous won’t like this, but once she points out how much of a fight it’ll be, she’s sure he’ll change his mind. Even if she _didn’t_ apparently have a Force bond with Bastila, how can she leave a _padawan_ in the hands of slavers?

“I- yes,” Bastila starts, “but I don’t understand why that matters.” She looks tired, resigned nearly, and Revan stops pacing, crosses the room to stand in front of the padawan, tries not to notice how she flinches back a step.

Of course she does. No matter how much a hero she thinks Revan used to be, it doesn’t change the fact that Revan is a Sith, has conquered half the galaxy, has destroyed two planets for her wars. (It shouldn’t hurt. She’d always appreciated how her command staff were just a little afraid of her, after all, and yet- and yet the tiny motion burns, somewhere in her chest.)

“You don’t think I’m just going to _leave_ you there, do you?” Revan asks, and Bastila _stops,_ a little.

“I- thought that, yes,” she admits after a moment, eyes gone wide. “I’m the Jedi who nearly killed you, after all, and you’re-” _A Sith,_ she doesn’t say, but she doesn’t have to.

And it _burns,_ but Revan closes her eyes, turns away, and says, “You’re not the one who nearly killed me. You’d be dead if it wasn’t for Malak’s… interference.” It still stings too much to say _betrayal._

 _(Because that’s what Sith do,_ he says, and he looks as exhausted as he had after Dxun, as hollow as he had after the echoes of Malachor finally started to die, and she did that to him.)

“Oh,” Bastila says, after a moment.

Revan doesn’t smile. “No one is selling you,” she says tiredly. “I destroyed the slave markets here once, I’ll do it again if I have to.” It’s not why she’s here. But if the Vulkars won’t be reasonable, or if they decide to sell Bastila off before the race - well, Revan has never had any problems with changing her plans before, and she’s hardly going to start now, even without Alek at her back.

“I never thought I’d be indebted to a Sith, but- thank you,” Bastila says, and there’s the slightest tremor in her voice when she continues, “I don’t know how much longer I can stand this.”

Before Revan can answer, the dream fades like smoke, but even as she wakes, there’s a determined certainty in her chest that nothing can shake. She’ll rescue this padawan, she’ll get off Taris, she’ll _get Malak back._

So swears Revan.

~

 _He’s standing on the bridge of the_ Leviathan, _activity swirling around him, and he’s the sole still point in the storm; the holotable is alight with projections of Revan’s fleet and the Republic’s, the trap they somehow walked into. Malak hadn’t seen it, but neither had Revan, and that’s the only consolation he has - after six years of war, he should’ve seen it, should’ve known. Should’ve been prepared, even if he didn’t do a thing to stop it._

_Because this trap - it’s an opportunity._

_The Jedi have sent a strike team to board the_ Vengeance _\- herald of victory and of defeat, Revan’s flagship since the beginning, most loved and most feared of all the ships in the galaxy - led by the padawan his spies have heard so much about, gifted with battle meditation. She’ll be powerful enough to catch Revan’s attention, powerful enough Revan will leave the main strategizing to him while she deals with this threat. Powerful enough Revan may even try to break her, to turn her. Either way, his- Either way, Revan will be distracted, and that means he can make his move._

 _Former Fleet Admiral Karath, now just Admiral Karath, has been watching Malak for months, since the last big argument he and Revan had, since the last time Malak spat that_ I won’t always be your shadow, _master. He knows what’s expected of him - Revan has been treating him more like a subordinate than a- whatever they were to each other (partners, lovers, best friends,_ everything), _and he doesn’t need her anymore. He’s tired of being in her shadow, of being her second, of always only ever seen as an extension of her, even his words never being his own, always hers. He can run this empire and he can win this war and he can face down Vitiate, and he doesn’t need her to do it._

_(He tells himself this over and over again as he adjusts his cape, as he straps on his half-mask, as he positions his fleet, as he meets Saul Karath’s eyes, as he shields the bond between him and Revan tighter than he has in months, and he can almost, almost believe it.)_

_Malak knows all Revan’s strategies, and he knows how she’s planning to beat back this fleet, can see the web she’s weaving, and so when the holotable flickers, when a projection of her springs to life - he is ready._ “Malak,” _Revan says, black robes swirling around her, hood hiding her hair and her mask - black and red beskar that’s become almost more familiar to him than her face, after so long, and even after seven years part of him will always hate the day she found it - and her voice is modulated but he knows every tiny shift in tone, could read her like an open book even if he couldn’t feel her. She’s eager, she’s enjoying herself, and she trusts him._

_She’s always trusted him. Never stopped, even though he’s kept his mind closed to hers more often than not these days, and how can he do this to her?_

_And then Karath looks over at him, a gleam in his eyes - the man likes power, likes that Malak will give it to him, and his loyalty is so easily bought - and he thinks of Revan’s lightsaber slamming into the mask on his face, of_ master _and_ apprentice, _and he steels himself and makes his face as blank as a sleeping datapad, as empty as space, and meets Revan’s eyes through the mask. “I’m here,” he says, pauses to turn and bark an order. “What do you need?”_

“The Jedi sent a strike team,” _she says._ “I need to deal with them. You have command.”

 _The holo flickers out before he can agree, but she brushes lightly against his mind, gratitude and warmth and something undefinable, and even through his shields he can feel her. The other half of his soul, and he loves her, he_ does. _He’s loved her for as long as he can remember._

_But it’s not enough anymore._

_And so Malak takes control, takes the edges of Revan’s web and gives orders, and he waits until he’s comfortable before he looks over at Karath. The man has a sharp light in his eyes even as he’s orchestrating the Republic’s defeat - they set a trap and even then, they can’t win. Revan’s fleet is too strong._

_Malak’s fleet, soon._

_“Pull the_ Leviathan _up even with the_ Vengeance,” _Malak orders, and Karath_ smiles _before he turns to give the orders. The techs, the command crew, the officers - all of them stop, for a minute, turn to look at him as the two capital ships ease up side by side, and he knows they know what he’s about to do. Some of them look eager. Some of them look afraid._

 _But all of them are looking at_ him.

 _He lets his shields drop, just a little, just enough to feel Revan’s mind steady and warm against his own, like it has been since they were teenagers, and she’s laughing silently, flashing him an image of a small group of Jedi in front of her._ This is all the Jedi could spare for me, I’m almost insulted, _she tells him, and in this moment she doesn’t feel like the Revan who tried to kill him, the Revan who proclaimed herself his master, the Revan who could barely stand to let him see her face. She feels like_ his _Revan, the two of them laughing as they sprint through the grasslands on Dantooine, as they tear through the levels of Coruscant on a stolen speeder, Revan’s hair flying in the wind and a light in her eyes that makes him want to kiss her more than anything._

 _“All turbolaser batteries, target the_ Vengeance’s _bridge,” Malak says, and through the half mask no one can hear the way his voice shakes, no one can see how he’s gritting his teeth just to force the words out. They’re all looking at him, and Karath is hungry for power, and he is a Sith, and what kind of Sith would he be if he didn’t try to kill his master? And whatever Revan has been, has done, she is his master now, and neither of them can forget it, not even in the late hours of the night when she’s curled up in his arms, forehead against his collarbone, and he’s sliding fingers through her braided hair, because even then, even in the sanctity of their room the mask sits on a shelf and stares at him like it’s taunting him._

 _So he swallows back a warning and he tightens his hands around the edge of the holotable and he fixes the sight of that battered mask in his mind._ I’m sorry, _he whispers, to the ghost of Revan in his mind, before the Dark and before the war and before the mask, and he lifts his shields as high as they can go._

_“Fire.”_

Malak drags a hand across his eyes, splashes water onto his face from the sink, straightens and grabs his mask from the shelf where he leaves it, fits it against his face and pushes his shoulders back. His shields are the lowest they’ve been in months and it feels strange, but the barely-there hum of Revan’s mind against his is-

It shouldn’t be comforting. The knowledge that he _failed,_ that even in betrayal he just can’t escape Revan’s shadow, it should eat at him - and it _does._ The first thing he’s truly done on his own since he met Revan in the creche at six years old, and he fails. Maybe that’s why there hadn’t even been a discussion on who would be the master and who would be the apprentice, maybe that’s why he’s always been her second-in-command, because he _can’t_ succeed on his own.

(And yet that’s not true, is it? In the month since Revan’s- not-death, Malak has run her empire, has conquered more of the galaxy, has stood on the bridge of the _Leviathan_ and watched worlds give their surrender and Jedi turn to his cause and the Republic tremble in his wake. He _doesn’t_ need Revan here, at his side, to be a leader and a warrior and a champion.

He doesn’t need her. But oh, how he _wants_ her.)

He doesn’t let the shadow of memories show on his face as he strides onto the bridge. The viewscreen is filled with the soft blue-white whorls of hyperspace and Karath is standing on the bridge, giving quiet orders to another officer. “Lord Malak,” the admiral says, saluting. “We’ll be over Taris in less than two days, and in the meantime, our fleet is keeping the planet blockaded. We will find Bastila Shan.”

Malak pauses, glances around, waves the junior officer off with one hand and motions for Karath to join him at the holotable. “And what about-” he pauses. “Her associate?”

Karath knows what he means. The admiral is the only other person who knows that Revan is alive, though Malak hadn’t been able to give him an answer when Karath asked, _what are you going to do about it?_ He doesn’t know what to do, is torn between a bitter anger and a desperate relief. “There are… rumors,” Karath says. “Our people are looking, but the ones who started the rumors are proving surprisingly reticent to give any specifics.”

“It can’t be that hard to drag information out of petty criminals,” Malak says, and Karath’s face twists.

“You’d be surprised, my lord. They seem to be afraid of someone else and wouldn’t say anything more. I’ll have my interrogators put the pressure on harder.”

Malak nods, and Karath salutes again and crosses to a comm station, and Malak steps out into the center of the bridge and stares out at hyperspace.

Revan is on Taris. Revan, who he loves, who he tried to kill, who he resents for always shining so much more brilliantly than him. He never used to mind standing in the shadow she cast, not when she smiled at him like that, not when she could read him better than anyone even after the blankness of Dxun, not when he was the only one she ever trusted enough to take off the mask around. 

Revan, who he has missed like a lost limb, like a piece of _himself,_ ever since he gave the order and even before then, since he asked for his own command, since he raised his shields more often than not, since he stopped trying to look beyond the mask.

Malak is not good enough at lying to himself to avoid the fact that he _wants her back._ Oh, he can fool his empire, his Sith, even Karath, but himself? Never himself.

But he is Sith, now. When Revan became the master and he became the apprentice, everything they were was shattered, and there’s no going back from that, no way to put the pieces back together. Revan tore them apart and he let her, and he is Sith, and she is his master.

Malak is not allowed to want her back. And so he walls off the part of him that would gladly let the galaxy burn just to hold her again, and he clasps his hands together behind his back, and he plans, because Revan cannot be allowed to escape Taris.

(Malak is not allowed to want her back. But Alek?

Oh, Alek _yearns.)_

**Author's Note:**

> MANDO'A:
> 
>  _jetii:_ Jedi
> 
>  _Te jatne verd ven'parji:_ May the best warrior win. (lit: the best warrior will win)
> 
>  _Mand'alor:_ title, respected warrior, leader of all Mandalorians, also called Mandalore in Basic
> 
>  _dar'jetii:_ lit. not Jedi, often refers to Sith


End file.
